Residual indentation is undoubtedly a significant factor when determining whether a sports flooring is multi-purpose.
It is a key value in assessing its strength, resilience, and ability to successfully perform as a multi-purpose sports flooring.
The purpose of multi-purpose sports flooring is, indeed, to guarantee players optimum performance which remains unchanged over time. But that's not all.
Rubber or PVC sports flooring – when declared multi-purpose – must be able to allow operators of sports facilities to use the flooring for frequent non-sports activities.
This means that it must offer low indentation, excellent impact absorption, and optimum load resistance in order to be able to host events of different types, such as educational activities, events which include the use of chairs and tables, precisely like resilient flooring for civil use
The goal of all manufacturers of sports flooring is above all to meet the performance parameters laid out by applicable legislation.
All rubber or PVC sports flooring by MONDO for indoor sports use, for example, fully meets the requirements of the EN 14904 standard ("Surfaces for sports areas. Indoor surfaces for multi-sports use. Specification"), having successfully passed the following tests:
As good as these results are, however, they are not enough.
In order to guarantee the best multi-purpose sports flooring – which is therefore able to provide excellent sports performance even when stressed by continuous non-sport use – it is necessary to continue to invest in research and validate the results achieved.
MONDO's labs performed a comparative analysis in which we chose to test the residual indentation performance of our flooring (in PVC and rubber) and of a range of commercially available sports surfaces.
It is, indeed, common for multi-purpose PVC sports flooring or rubber gym flooring to be named or promoted as “multi-use” precisely due to their low residual indentation.
Is this really the case? Is this sufficient for a multi-purpose sports flooring to be considered suitable for non-sports use as well? And if so, which multi-sport gym flooring offers the best performance in terms of indentation response? Let's find out together.
The assessment was performed on:
In order to determine the effective suitability for multi-use scenarios, in addition to the requirements for sports use, we carried out a specific assessment for the indentation tests.
The tests were performed in accordance with the most stringent ISO 24343-1 test method (Resilient and laminate floor coverings - Determination of indentation and residual indentation — Part 1: Residual indentation) used for testing flooring for civil use.
The 6.2 mm Vinylsport M PVC flooring emerged as the multi-sport flooring with the best performance of all those tested.
Its residual indentation performance compared to the other MONDO floorings and the 6.2 mm thick PVC flooring products from competitors recommended for multi-purpose use was between 30% and 50% better.
As such, it was found to be the most suitable flooring for multi-purpose sports facilities for sports and non-sports use.
The research also produced another useful finding, that multi-sport flooring products of greater thicknesses actually behave very similarly to multi-purpose sports flooring of 6.2 mm thickness with similar wear layer composition.
During the testing of the non-MONDO products, the PVC flooring of 7.0 mm thickness demonstrated “residual indentation equivalent to and in some cases even better than all 6.2 mm PVC flooring tested”.
The same applies to rubber flooring.
The technical tests highlighted that the two rubber sports floorings, Powerplay P1 and Powerplay II – despite their greater thickness – “exhibit reduced residual indentation at a given time compared to all 6.2 mm PVC flooring products from competitors recommended for multi-purpose use”.
The residual indentation tests after five hours showed performance:
These results show how multi-purpose rubber sports flooring can be as suitable, or even more so, than PVC sports flooring for non-sports use.